Talos Guide You
by QuietBlondeOne
Summary: During the Great War, two individuals meet, each with their own view; their own motivation as to why they are fighting in a war not their own. Through camaraderie, both soon begin to realize the cost and profit of a battle that can't be won so easily. Backstory to Ulfric and Rikke's association with one another, set before Skyrim, during the Great War of 171. Rated T for now.


**AN:**** Woah guys! What's up? So I know what you're probably thinking…or, maybe you're not I dunno. "Why is QBO writing a new fanfic when she said that she was trying to finish her other story before school started?" Well, I got an answer for that. This is sort of a side project I'm doing, meaning more than likely, it'll be updated when I get new ideas and such. My other fic, **_**The Mind of Ysgramor**_**, is pretty much done already in terms of planning, I just need to type it up. This on the other hand will go where it goes. I've been wanting to write it for a while, and have finally decided to do it. So, here we go, I give you a back story between the Legate of Solitude, and the Bear of Windhelm. This will be told in a 3****rd****-person POV of Rikke.**

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**Talos Guide You: ****Prologue**

**(Present Time)**

She sits in her room in Solitude, the seat she lounges in facing the large ornate window residing at the side of her bed, the soft glow of moonlight sifting through the glass, splaying lit patterns on the marble floor at her feet. She sighs and covers her eyes with a hand, breathing in, breathing out. It's been a long day, and the aging warrior doesn't know how much more she can take before her muscles give out on her just as her heart and mind have on this day.

She reaches over to her side table, grabs her goblet, and takes a lingering sip of wine. The war is over, the battle is done, the Imperials victorious. Yet, she does not celebrate like her comrades. She can hear them whooping and hollering through the old castle's walls. She'd rather sit here, alone, lingering on thoughts of the past. Reflecting on how so much changed in what seemed like a short time, although it had been like a lifetime since things really mattered.

She stands up slowly, her nightgown falling like a curtain over her thin yet muscular exterior, and glides like a graceful bird toward an object on her bed. She bends over slightly, her golden locks falling over her shoulders, and lifts the heavy material up to examine it, then brings it to her chest and embraces it as she would a child.

_His robes…_

She buries her nose into the fabric, the scent of _him_ overwhelming her nostrils. Pine, cedar, smoke, the musk of a Nordic man, she detects each individual smell and imprints each into a distinct slot in her memory, but finds that they have already been filled. She knows these scents, she was able to experience them long ago, when she was younger… when they were together…

…_When he was alive._

She brings the robes to her face, her shoulders heaving as she begins to sob quietly into them. She falls to her knees on the floor and hugs the material tighter to her body, convincing herself that maybe if she holds on for just long enough, he will come back, alive and himself, the man she thought she would be with for the rest of her life when she was young and naïve, not the over-powering warlord he had become, the twisted racist murderer that everyone saw him as.

Tullius had given her _his_ robes as a symbol of her individual victory, while he kept _his_ head personally hiked on a pike in front of the Imperial's quarters near the palace as his prize. A sign of intimidation to others, but to her, a pained reminder of what exactly she had lost through all of this.

She lies down on the cold floor, the temperature matching how she feels, and she wraps herself in his robes, making sure they cover her completely, just as he had her first time, that one night long ago under Secunda's soft light, the same glow cascading into her room at this very moment. Slowly the memories flooded through her mind, starting from when she had joined the Legion for the Great War, and truly beginning the day she had gazed into the soft determined eyes of the Bear of Eastmarch's son for the first time…

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**AN:**** This almost made me cry typing it. This is the prologue, set to what happens after the war if you join the Imperials. You probably know who the woman is :) The next chapter and beyond that, a trip to the past.**


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